Having proven himself the master of contemporary political satire with his last feature IN THE LOOP and his critically beloved TV series "The Thick of It" and "Veep," Armando Iannucci sets his sights on Russian history and the power vacuum left by the death of one of the twentieth century's greatest tyrants. When Joseph Stalin is felled by a stroke after decades of terrorizing his political subordinates and the USSR at large, a struggle for who will take his place begins at the highest level of the Soviet regime, pitting the head of the secret police Lavrenty Beria (played with uncompromising viciousness by Simon Russell Beale) against the politically ambitious Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi). Without shying away from any nasty particularities like state-sanctioned murder, Iannucci plays this bloody passage of Russian history as farce, ensuring that every one of the film's plentiful laughs will stick in your throat. DCP digital. (CW)